Does DDT Have Dementia?
Tags: Alzheimer's disease, dementia, mental instability
DDT's racism, misogyny, narcissism, paranoia, and lack of ethics have been obvious for several decades, but his current behavior shows an extreme version of past personality—a shift that could be connected to cognitive decline and dementia. Only after Ronald Reagan left the presidency was he diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and his wife, Nancy, protected him from any general awareness of his disease while he was in office. Researchers examining Reagan's speeches found substantial declines in his language with a large reduction in unique words and a great increase in non-specific nouns, filler words such as "basically," and low-image verbs such as "get" and "do."
In his book about his father, Ron Reagan wrote about his Ronald Reagan's presidential debate with Walter Mondale in 1984:
"My heart sank as he floundered his way through his responses, fumbling with his notes, uncharacteristically lost for words. He looked tired and bewildered."
Reagan's brother, Michael, disputes this opinion, but scholars are more likely to side with Ron Reagan.
DDT's parallels to Reagan are obvious from his fourth-grade language that often makes no sense to his lengthy comments that use no specifics and express nothing. He relies on generalities such as "great" and "tremendous" while failing to know the names of people, even House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), demonstrated by his reference to "this gentleman" or as "Ron" in a speech in Ryan's district. Alex Leo (Daily Beast) transcribed one statement during a campaign stop in South Carolina:
"Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it's true!—but when you're a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that's why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my, like, credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it's four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger, fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us."
Journalists have noted DDT's mental problems for over a year. In April 2016, DDT said in Pittsburgh, "How's Joe Paterno? We gonna bring that back? Right? How about that—how about that whole deal?" Paterno was head coach of Penn State's football team and forced to resign for covering up a child-molestation scandal involving one of his coaches. Trump was probably the only person in the room who didn't remember Paterno died in 2012. DDT said that the 9/11 terror attack on the World Trade Center occurred on 7/11. He even walked out of the Oval Office, forgetting to sign the executive order at an event for that purpose and failed to locate Rudy Giuliani sitting across from him at a media briefing.
DDT has made thousands of puzzling statements in the almost two years since he started his campaign, including insinuating that Frederick Douglass, who died in the 19th century, might still be alive; talking about how President Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the Civil War, might have prevented it, and calling Pavarotti, who died a decade earlier, a great friend. His wife had to remind him to put his hand on his heart for the national anthem; he forgot which country he had just bombed; and he confused Kim Jong-Un with his father when complaining about Bill Clinton.
In speeches, DDT frequently asks people, time and again, if they know common facts, for example marveling that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican—as if he had just discovered this fact each time he repeats it. At a women's empowerment meeting last March, he said, "I'm shocked that you've heard of [Susan B. Anthony]!" He also referenced a Nigerian proverb as Irish when he greeted Ireland's prime minister Enda Kenny on St. Patrick's Day.
DDT's tweets are notorious not only for misspelling, bad grammar, confusing quotation marks, and general confusion but also for misinformation. For example, he ranted against the 9th Circuit Court about blocking his attempts to deny federal funding to what he calls "sanctuary cities" when the ruling judge is not on that court.
In his interview with Lester Holt last week, Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) told the journalists that he invented the term "prime the pump" and never heard it before although he has used it several times in the past. The metaphor was first used at least 200 years ago, and President Franklin Roosevelt may have been the first to describe economics in 1933. DDT's speeches are filled with repetitions, frequently within the same sentence, and he seems to be extremely forgetful.
His positions veer from one direction to another; he said he might break up the banks, establish a gas tax, and be "honored" to meet with North Korea's Kim Jong-Un right before he said that the country's nuclear weapons make nobody safe. One day he says that he's pulling the U.S. out of NAFTA; the next day, he's changed his mind.
Concerns about DDT's mental situation have circulated for a long time. In the beginning, many professionals have declared that they could not have an opinion without examining him, but his increasingly erratic behavior has changed that. Five top psychiatrists at a Yale conference agreed that DDT has "a dangerous mental illness."
Alzheimer's disease, a progressive degenerative disorder, results loss of memory, thinking, and language skills. In its early stages, people forget words and what they have said, repeat things, and cannot remember names and dates. People know nothing about his personal medical history and little about that of his family. DDT's father was diagnosed with Alzeimer's, and the disease can be hereditary. Like Reagan, DDT appears normal when he keeps to his prepared speech, and the warning signs appear when he ad-libs. Most people suffering from the disease show signs at 65; DDT is 70.
Behavioral changes are other symptoms of Alzheimer's. DDT's moodiness, paranoia, belligerence, and erratic behavior lend to highly inappropriate tweets, the belief that his phones are tapped and that James Comey may release his "tapes," and his uncontrollable anger, for example when he was talking to the Australian prime minister whose name he also couldn't remember during a recent press conference in New York City. DDT's anger and jealousy led to his blocking a prestigious award for Jimmy Carter from Argentina for Carter's promotion of human rights during Argentina's last military dictatorship. The award was cancelled after the U.S. government asked the nation to "delay" it.
The daily blog of White House activities illustrate how "low energy" DDT is: he speaks to a few people or occasionally has a dinner while he has assigned all the normal presidential duties to others such as son-in-law Jared Kushner. White supremacist Steve Bannon is probably still writing all his orders and other statements—except the awkward letter firing James Comey—unless other aides have taken over these duties. The Pentagon is fully in charge of all military actions without DDT input. Although a golfer, DDT is anti-exercising, believing that people are like batteries with a finite amount of energy.
Other people are more polite about DDT's mental issues: E.J. Dionne used the term "ineptitude," others have referred to him as "out of control," and the Washington Post provided an official's phrase, "in the grip of some kind of paranoid delusion" as well as angry, impulsive, and directionless. People might want to be careful, however, when he asks who stole the strawberries.